It’s not about safety. They want our culture eradicated. They even say so:

Mr Ahern says the legislation is designed to halt the emergence of a gun culture in Ireland.

Paul Helmke says he is hopeful:

I am hopeful that our Congress will now start addressing proactive measures to reduce gun violence in this country by doing things like requiring background checks for all gun sales, particularly at gun shows.  We make it too easy for dangerous people to get dangerous weapons in America.

Emphasis in the original.

Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center, has similar thoughts:

Today’s legislative victory reinvigorates us in the fight for stricter gun control laws. The next target of the gun control community will be passage of national legislation to close the so-called “gun show loophole” by requiring stringent Brady background checks on all gun purchases. Hopefully this victory will give momentum to efforts of the administration, Congress and the gun control advocacy community to enact strong and safe gun control measures, like this one, that will protect the sanctity and value of human life.

Why do “dangerous people” have access to the general population? Shouldn’t they be locked up in prison? Do we also make it too easy for “dangerous people” to get gasoline and matches? How about clubs, knives, and pointy sticks?

They were only able to get 39 votes in the Senate to stop legislation that I wouldn’t have dreamed would even come up for consideration a year ago. Their “gun show loophole” mantra has been going on for at least ten years and they are “hopeful” now is the time for it? They have mental problems. But we already knew that.

Sometimes “The Gun Guy” is so far out that it’s like a caricature. But he’s further out than I could portray even if I tried. Case in point:

If the gun lobby gets its way in Congress, the following scenarios might become all too real:

• You’re visiting an elderly family member at the hospital when you see a gruff man in the parking lot adjusting his loaded and deadly handgun in his belt. You inform the nurse that there is a dangerous and armed man outside and the nurse informs you that it is “legal” for the gun owner to carry a concealed weapon only steps away from the hospital entrance.
• You’re walking through the park with your kids on a sunny day eating ice cream when you see two men pull up in a dark SUV. As you walk by, you see them take two handguns out of the glove box and stick them in their jackets. You immediately call 9-1-1 to inform the police that there are armed men in a park with families and children, but the police tell you that unless their is cause, the armed men are perfectly legal carrying deadly weapons in family-friendly locations.
• You’re at a coffee shop sipping your latte when you see a woman with a handgun casually tucked inside her purse chatting away on her cell phone and says she’s from out of state. You’re terrified at the sight of the weapon knowing that children are present. You ask an employee why loaded handguns are allowed at a coffee shop and the barista says that the owner still hasn’t posted a sign explicitly prohibiting carrying concealed weapons and therefore it’s permitted.

A gruff man with a handgun is known to be dangerous? “A gruff man with a handgun” describes a fair number of police officers.

He puts quotes around the word legal? It’s currently legal in nearly all states. So what is his point? The proposed law wouldn’t make the described scenarios any more or less legal.

Armed men in the park? I’ve done this more times than I could count and I know lots of people that do it. It’s currently legal in nearly all states. So what is his point?

Women at a coffee shop with a gun in her purse–and his point is? Oh, yeah. He’s terrified.

If he were talking about blacks or homosexuals that way it would be virtually impossible for him to get or keep a job. But since it is gun owners he is talking about he gets paid by the Joyce Foundation to spew hate at such a ridiculous level it’s difficult to not believe it is a deliberate farce.

Either Scott Vogel is conning the Joyce Foundation or he is really wacko. I’m really not sure which.

Via an email from Mike B.

The city of Seattle can’t ban firearms from being carried openly because of state preemption–so they do what they can:

Q: Is it illegal to bring an unconcealed airsoft handgun into a public place?

A: Seattle police say it is, and reference Seattle Municipal Code section 12A.14.083, regarding weapons in public places.

That states: “It is unlawful to knowingly carry or shoot any spring gun, air gun, sling or slingshot, in, upon, or onto any public place.”

“An airsoft gun specifically fits into that weapons code,” police spokesman Jeff Kappel said.

But police note the above code does not reference or regulate the carrying of firearms which are different from airsoft guns.

So I could legally walk down the sidewalk with my fully loaded (18 + 1 of .40 S&W) STI and a spare magazine openly displayed in a holster on my belt and someone else with an unloaded Airsoft gun in their backpack could be end up paying a fine of up to $500 and/or spend two months in jail for a first offense (up to 12 months for a third conviction).

Bigots, they try to get away with whatever they can no matter how ridiculous it is.

…(or how many times you’ve seen it already) that’s funny right there.  With credit given to Larry The Cable Guy (you do also have an alter to him in your bedroom closet, complete with votive candles, don’t you?  Or am I weird?)

This goes out to Dennis A. Henigan, who clearly needs some cheering up these days as he’s being beaten by a bunch of redneck dolts, and to the people of the TSSAA, who need a little bit of reality therapy to help them in their decision making during these trying times.

Dennis; the dialog in the video is a little more than one of us dumb, inbred, backwoods Idaho rednecks can fit on a bumper sticker.  Maybe we could reduce it to a simple, easily repeatable and easy to spell phrase like, “Gun Free Zones Are Dumb”.  I don’t know; with your superior intellect, maybe you could do a little better.  If you do a good job I promise to put it on the back window of my “rig” as we say in Idaho.  Just be sure to make it small enough that it doesn’t obscure the AR-15 in the gun rack of my beat-up 4 x 4 pickup.

No wonder they can’t answer Just One Question! The laws weren’t intended to “regulate for health and safety”. Kurt explains.

If the regulations were to “regulate for health and safety” Sebastian explains what that would be like.

I would like to point that it seems to me that the VPC is over stating things just a bit with this claim:

President Obama’s signing of a bill granting the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulatory authority over the tobacco industry now leaves the gun industry as the last American industry not regulated for health and safety.

Let me repeat. Guns are now the only consumer product manufactured in America not regulated by a federal agency for health and safety.

Could someone explain to me what federal agency regulates the following consumer products for health and safety:

• Software
• Buckets
• Jewelry
• Swimming pools
• Websites
• Books
• Music
• Entertainment
• Prostitution (legal in parts of Nevada and the Feds once owned a brothel confisicated for failure to pay taxes but the Feds couldn’t even make money running a whorehouse and they went out of business)
• Locks and keys
• Hand tools
• Cardboard boxes

Also note that the number of accident deaths due to gunshot wounds are at, or near, an all time low in the neighborhood of less than 700 per year (642 in 2006–See table 18).

Finally I would also like to point out that there is a private model for health and safety approval that appears to work quite well for electrical applicances. It’s call the Underwriters Laboratory.

Hence, Federal regulations are not needed because; 1) there isn’t a problem that needs to be fixed, and 2) There are private solutions that would work better if there were a problem.

A new book written by anti-gun bigot Dennis Henigan has just been announced. He calls it Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy. If I could borrow a copy rather than have my money go toward his furthering of discrimination against gun owners I’d take the time to read it. I’d love to take it apart in public for him. But since I don’t have a copy in hand right now I’ll just do what I can with what I presume are his best shots as given in the press release:

In Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy, published by Potomac Books, Henigan takes on the highly memorable, but completely unsupportable slogans that for decades have been the staple of the National Rifle Association and other relentless opponents of sensible gun laws, and dismantles them one by one. Lethal Logic also is the first book to assess the impact on the gun control debate of last year’s Heller decision by the Supreme Court and the book’s conclusions about Heller will surprise many on both sides of the issue.

…

Some of Henigan’s observations on the gun lobby’s “bumper sticker” slogans:

• “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Henigan counters with Ozzy Osbourne’s take on that: “If that’s the case, why do we give people guns when they go to war? Why not just send the people?”
• “But what you really want [is to ban all guns.]” Henigan explains that for the gun lobby, “the gun debate needs to be a debate about banning all guns. The slippery slope argument is the NRA’s primary means of achieving this goal.”
• “An armed society is a polite society.” The more guns, the safer we all are, the gun extremists say – and they cite Switzerland as Utopia. But Henigan points out that Switzerland has high gun ownership because of mandatory militia service, and that citizens in mandatory militia service face government inspection of the guns in their homes and must account for all their bullets. “Can you imagine the fury of the NRA’s opposition to any suggestion that guns in the homes of U.S. citizens be subject to government inspection?”

As to “If that’s the case, why do we give people guns when they go to war? Why not just send the people?” Try sending the guns without the people and see how well the war goes. It’s the people that make the difference.

Try this experiment (okay, do the thought experiment if you don’t think you can get the human subjects testing approval):

Suppose you were to drop Dennis Henigan and Sarah Brady in the woods with all the guns and ammo they can carry. And a half mile away you drop in an Army Ranger or Navy Seal completely naked, one hand tied behind their back and a patch over one eye. If you tell them only one side can leave the woods alive I’m betting that by the next morning, despited being outnumbered 2:1 and out armed, the warrior will be walking out of the woods fully clothed, armed, and wearing Sarah and Dennis’s ears as a necklace.

Gun are tools used by people. Without the people the guns don’t kill, with or without guns people can kill. Guns just make violence against people easier. Sometimes that violence is for good and sometimes it is for evil. Most of the time guns are used for good. Reducing the access of guns to good people enables evil.

As to “But what you really want [is to ban all guns.] … the gun debate needs to be a debate about banning all guns.” No, the debate doesn’t have to be about that. Why not answer Just One Question? Justify the existence of any legal restriction on guns with data that conclusively demonstrates the restriction improved public safety. Or if that is something Henigan wants to avoid then explain why a “reasonable restriction” against gun owners wouldn’t be just as constitutionally repugnant as a similar restriction against black slaves who had been freed by the 13^th Amendment.

As to government inspection of guns and accounting for all the bullets in the homes of the Swiss Henigan has to heavily distort the truth to make his point.

Here is the part where what Henigan says is mostly true:

Each such individual is required to keep his army-issued personal weapon (the 5.56x45mm Sig 550 rifle for enlisted personnel or the SIG 510 rifle and/or the 9mm SIG-Sauer P220 semi-automatic pistol for officers, medical and postal personnel) at home with a specified personal retention quantity of government-issued personal ammunition (50 rounds 5.56 mm / 48 rounds 9mm), which is sealed and inspected regularly to ensure that no unauthorized use takes place.^[2]

Here is what Henigan completely ignores in order to make his point:

The government subsidizes the production of military ammunition and then sells the ammunition at cost. Swiss military ammo must be registered if bought at a private store, but need not be registered if bought at a range. Registration consists of entering your name in a log at the time of sale. No serial numbers are present on the individual cartridges of ammunition. Technically, ammunition bought at the range must be used at the range, but according to David Kopel “the rule is barely known and almost never obeyed.”^[2] Ammunition for long gun hunting is not subsidized by the government and is not subject to any sales control. Non-military non-hunting ammunition more powerful than .22 LR (such as custom handgun ammunition) is registered at the time of sale.^[10]

The article goes on to say:

Purchases from dealers of hunting long guns and of small bore rifles are not even recorded by the dealer. In other words, the dealer would not record the sale of a .30-06 hunting rifle, but would record the sale of a .30-06 M1 Garand rifle.^[2] According to chapter 2 article 10 of Swiss law, people over the age of 18 do not need a permit to purchase a rifle for use in hunting, off-duty shooting and sport-shooting events.^[10]

So why is it that Henigan didn’t tell us the rest of the story? That’s right, the facts hurt his case. He can’t make his points without cherry picking the data.

If those are the best shots Dennis could come up with the rest must be so poor as to be the equivalent of not getting his shotgun to get on paper with an USPSA target at five feet. Which of course means he must be shooting blanks.